Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)
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399. To ask the Minister for Health the length of time a person (details supplied) must wait for cataract surgery; the average wait time for such surgery in County Limerick; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4206/19]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Improving access to hospital treatment is a key priority for Government.

It is acknowledged that cataract surgery is among the most common surgical procedures carried out in the Ophthalmology specialty. It was in this knowledge that when proposals for the joint HSE/National Treatment Purchase Fund Inpatient and Day Case Action Plan were under development last year, I sought a particular focus on reducing waiting times for a number of high volume specialties including cataracts. The Action Plan, allocated a quarter (5,000 out of 20,000) of the planned NTPF procedures to cataract treatments.

Waiting list figures for December 2018, published by the NTPF show that considerable improvements have been made to the number of patients waiting for an Inpatient or Day case procedure which have fallen to 70,204 from the peak of 86,100 in July 2017. This represents a reduction of over 18% in the overall number of patients waiting for a procedure. Over the same period, the waiting lists for Cataracts has reduced from over 10,000 to 6,440 representing a reduction of 36%.

In 2018, the Action Plan also recommended that the HSE and NTPF identify sustainable initiatives to improve waiting times. In this context, a dedicated centre for cataract surgery in Nenagh opened last July, and at full capacity will be capable of delivering up to 2,000 procedures annually. The centre is ideally located to enable the UL hospital group, in collaboration with the HSE and NTPF, to maximise the use of the Centre through collaboration with other hospital groups so that patients from surrounding regions can be referred to the Centre for their treatment.

In relation to the average wait time for cataract surgery in Co. Limerick, please see the following table.

Average Wait Time for Cataract Surgery Limerick vs Nationally as at 24/01/2019

In relation the patient query element of the question, as this is a service matter, I have asked the HSE to respond to the Deputy directly.